David Davidson, 77, a novelist and author of about 100...

November 4, 1985

NEW YORK — David Davidson, 77, a novelist and author of about 100 network television plays, died Friday after a stroke.

Davidson, a journalist-turned-novelist, wrote his plays, sometimes under the pseudonym Albert Sanders, during what he called the ''golden age'' of television drama in the early and mid-1950s. They were seen nationally on such programs as ABC's Alcoa Hour, NBC's Elgin Hour and Kraft Television Theater and CBS's Playhouse 90. One of Davidson's plays, P.O.W., became the first production of The United States Steel Hour, broadcast by ABC in October 1953.

Born in New York City, Davidson graduated from City College and the Columbia School of Journalism and went to work at The New York Evening Post in 1933. Five years later he turned to radio, writing hundreds of scripts for some of the most popular serial programs of the time.

By the late 1950s, Davidson began to voice disenchantment with television as a source of solid drama, holding that scriptwriters, like the rest of the industry, had abandoned quality in a scramble for mass production and ratings. As national chairman of the Writers Guild of America, he told Federal Communications Commission hearings in 1961 that deteriorating standards and professional pressures had prompted him and some colleagues to turn out soap operas under assumed names.

He later taught at New York University and the University of Iowa. In addition, he continued to write magazine articles and contributed to television series, including the recent Civilization and the Jews.

Davidson came to national attention with his first novel, The Steeper Cliff, published in 1947. It was based on his experience with the American military government in postwar Bavaria trying to revive a democratic German press. During World War II, Davidson served the federal Office for Inter- American Affairs on a mission to South America, a setting that became the background for his second novel, The Hour of Truth, published in 1949. He also wrote In Another Country in 1950 and The Quest of Juror 19, published in 1971.